I don’t think I’ve ever done a build thread, and this is only sort of one. For whatever reason I’ve decided to document my adventures of MR2.

Nostalgia is a bitch. I’d naturally assume mock the concept, instead I’m just going to let it continue to take its course.

It all started 1998. I happenstanced upon a 91 MR2 turbo for sale in my quiet WI town. I think the asking price was $6500 and it had something like 90k miles on it. Gran Turismo had barely hit the shelves. Craigslist was not a thing. Few locals seemed to know what that car was, even fewer could refer to it without using some derogatory terminology. I managed to find/borrow/steal enough money to make the guy an offer and took it home for $5800. Luckiest high school kid in the world. It was an insanely cool first car.
I obviously fell in love with it. The sounds, feel, smell, solid build quality. For a kid growing up obsessed with cars this was a dream come true. Unfortunately, the love affair didn’t last long. The next year my family relocated to Houston, TX. The already high insurance more than tripled. I was forced to give it up despite pleas to just park it in the garage for when the insurance costs went down.

20 years and 45 cars later, it's time to go back. I had been casually keeping my eyes out for a good opportunity to acquire another MR2 for a few years, but nothing ever quite lined up. I decided in spring ‘18 that I wanted a project car and that it should definitely be an MR2. I was determined to make it happen…

MR2 #1: Iím at the point where Iíve got text alerts from CL in 5 different metro areas. Thatís how far down the rabbit hole I am. Actually thatís not, itís worse, but Iíll leave that story for another time. Iíve looked at several MR2s but most are basket cases. A clean title 91 hard top NA in green (my favorite color) popped up nearby for $800 as a non-runner. I drove straight there at 9pm only stopping at the ATM on the way. I had the car towed to my house the next day. I simply changed the cap and rotor and it was off running and driving. Even though the shell was quite straight, it was pretty ugly and needed, well, everything. As I added up all the dollars of parts I was going to put into it, I decided I needed 1) to start with a turbo car and 2) something a wee bit nicerÖ

MR2 #2: I am shagging cones at the SCCA autocross champ tour in CA when I get a text alert. I caught a quick glimpse and a great deal on a yellow 92 turbo has popped up in Austin, TX. My father lives there. During a short audit interlude I gave him a call and asked him to go check it out. A few hours later I had agreed to purchase the car based on my fatherís quick inspection. After the long journey from Texas to Oregon I had a turbo MR2! The car turned out to be pretty decent aside from some horrendous stereo stuff I had to pull out, but there was one real gotcha. My father had said the power steering was out. No big deal I thought; I can fix that. Well turns out it didnít have power steering at all. I didnít realize you could get a fully loaded turbo without it. I didnít particularly like that outcome as the non-ps rack-ratio is terrible and power steering is a difficult retrofit. But I was willing to live with it and just have a fun street car to play with untilÖ

MR2 #3: Iím headed to the garage to go mess around with the yellow car when my wife pleads with me to spend some time with her instead. Her mistake! A few minutes later Facebook alerts me of a good deal on a clean 93 Steel Mist Grey Turbo for sale in CA with 104k on the clock. 15 minutes later Iím agreeing to fly to go pick this thing up sight unseen. It made the 10 hour drive back home without drama, even though the coolant temp gauge didnít work and I had to just hope it was the $10 sender (it was).

This is the car Iíve finally stuck with, but by May I had quite the garage. I managed to sell both the green and yellow cars fairly quickly without losing anything, which for me is a win. This was especially important as I was about to trade a three-car garage for a small tandem garage in the city.

With how nice and unmolested the 1993 MR2 was, I started down the path of just restoring it back to former glory. The car had never been modified at all, just somewhat neglected. It had been in an accident in Ď09 and would likely never get big dollars from BAT, but overall it was a nice quality example. I went through all the small stuff to make it a nice car again. A host of relatively uninteresting maintenance and nuisance things were fixed: Windshield, shift boot, shift knob, factory subwoofers, power antenna, gauge temp sender, brake rotors, pads, all the fluids, ignition tune up, etc.

First major thing on the car that needed some work was from a racoon incident that had tweaked the AC condenser and radiator. I straightened up the flimsy support and put in a new condenser and used oem turbo radiator. Despite the AC having been R12 and open for the last decade, with a new drier and R134 retrofit, the AC worked great!
Cosmetically the front bumper had some chips and the original lip was cracked. The rear bumper and spoiler had faded and oxidized a bit over the years too. I had a friend Allen repaint both bumpers and the spoiler. I also replaced the front lip with one of the urethane OEM reproductions. I will likely go further and repaint the whole car in the future, but it looks pretty good as is.

My wife and I planned a trip up to Victoria BC in July and I wanted to take the MR2. Unfortunately, the car was still on its original 25 year old timing belt! I wasnít comfortable doing a long roadtrip without changing that out first. It is truly a PITA job to change in the car, especially with all the stock parts that are crammed in there. Then I had to do it a second time because the crank seal in the kit I used was 1mm off and I hadnít noticed. Amazingly both the HFH and the original timing belt looked great and were pliable. It would have been fine to leave them, better safe than sorry.
The trip went well, car was solid the whole way. For me, taking the MR2 improved on the whole experience. It really was a lovely stock MR2 Turbo, and thatís probably where it should have stayedÖ

Upon return I started on the original suspension. I replaced the now 106k struts with some Koni inserts and added an ST 24mm front bar, because why not. The bar really livened the front end responsiveness and the car felt much better. I also replaced the ball joints on all corners and threw some camber bolts in to give a bit more sporting alignment.

Autocross is my main hobby. I decided to give the car a whirl in C-Street trim for fun. I mounted a square set of 205 RE-71rs on the stock wheels and took the car out to Packwood, WA for a local event. The car did surprisingly well in stock trim. Despite its reputation, the MR2 was honestly the most neutral and easy to drive of all the mid-engine cars Iíve driven. Not being particularly fast helps, but it also didnít really have any bad habits other than the usual mid-engine handling characteristics. I let a few friends take a spin as well during fun-runs and they all seemed to think it was well behaved and easy to drive.

I wanted to have a real boost gauge and I always wanted to play with Arduino stuff, so here was an excuse. I bought a cheap $12 ADC board and $5 display and turned the original clock into a boost display using the 5v signal from the stock map sensor. The startup sequence shows the MR2 sillhouette (stolen idea from Porsche). It works well and I really like how the low tech display matches the 90s character of the car.

The next thing was to give an HPDE a whirl. I picked up some Hankook RS4s in 225/45/15 and 245/40/15 and mounted them on some 15x7 and 15x8 rota slipstreams. *the RE-71rs were repurposed to my miata - those poor rear 205 tires wouldnít have lasted long on the heavy MR2. I amazon primed EBC yellow pads to hope they would get me through the day. I took the car out to Oregon Raceway Park and it was an absolute blast. The MR2 was great all day Ė well mostly. It felt very balanced and neutral on track. However the car pulled tons of timing and by the third 20 min session I was only seeing 4-5psi of boost. Between the tiny stock intercooler and factory exhaust the heat load was too much. Despite barely being able to pass a stock Miata I just kept on trucking for three more sessions. I still had a great time turning laps and the car never complained aside from being slow. After that fun day I decided that the right direction for the MR2 is to become a fun, streetable HPDE car.

If the car was going to survive the track, at minimum it would need a better intercooler. I replaced the intercooler with one of the generic Greddy-style cores, fan shroud, and 9Ē fan. At the same time, I added a simple manual boost controller because surely the cure for heat problems is more boost. Related to that, I was thinking in the back of my head that a 2GR V6 is in my future so I ordered the Berk exhaust knowing that it would work with the existing Wilhelm Raceworks midpipe. I wasnít enamored with the look or fitment of the Berk, but the sound was great and it grew on me.

I also decided that I should lower the car and would eventually like to fit more tire. After measuring the remaining travel with the stock struts housings, lowering springs just wasnít going to work for me. I should have just ordered the koni 8611 setup from Wilhelm, but since the car had no real purpose I decided Iíd spend half as much on some FA coilovers. I also wanted them since they allow for independent height adjustability at the hub. I used a short spring up front and Iím able to easily fit the 245/15 (currently on the rear) in the front in the stock fender. I might want to stuff an even bigger Hoosier on there someday for S&Gís. I also added Wilhelmís upper mounts that provide additional camber and quite a bit of caster. The mega caster made the car almost vague on turn-in but then really hook once set. Iím guessing scrub radius also has something to do with this. The FAs feel comfortable enough around town and donít seem to have any bad behaviors. When the bleed is opened up they lack a lot of fine motion control, but otherwise they seem to work pretty well

There may have been a slight tick from the exhaust manifold when I first bought the car, but after the track day there was a clear start-up chirp. I knew pulling the warped manifold and turbo was a necessary evil. In 93 Toyota switched to a 9 stud manifold to help alleviate the manifold warp. My car is a 93, and has 9 holes in the head, but the manifold was the earlier 7 hole version. I purchased a resurfaced 9-hole manifold and new studs from Kris at KO racing. Did you know you have to order two head to manifold gaskets from Toyota to do one 4cyl manifold, seriously? I bought some Inconel turbo studs from full-race as well because I had already been through turbo manifold / stud hell on a previous Miata. I also picked up a used KO downpipe from a friend John. Once I had removed that beast of a primary catalytic converter I had no wish to put it back in.

I also pulled the valve cover off and replaced the head studs with ARPs. The hope is that they would help prevent the head gasket from blowing. I should have pulled the head and replaced the gasket, but I didnít feel like it and I had no indication that it had any issues
During my timing belt change I ran into one stuck 10mm bolt on the bottom of the thermostat housing that I had deferred at the time. While I had the exhaust manifold out I decided that it was time for it to come off. Through sheer will or maybe just shear, the bolt came out with the stud and cracked the thermostat housing. So now Iím doing the timing belt for the third *$#@#ing time while I replace the water pump with a new one. Yeah definitely should have just done the head gasket.

Once that little project was out of the way, I have to say the downpipe made the most noticeable difference in the cars output on the butt-dyno. Spool is obviously much quicker too. The car would not be considered fast by todayís standards, but with a few extra psi and the newfound volume, it is really fun to drive.

Winter had come so I just used the car to run errands and cruise to work and back. I came across a set of old BBS LMs from a fellow MR2 owner that needed refinishing. After quite a bit of work by both myself and friend Allen, they really make the car look great.

My primary goal for the car over the winter was to get a roll bar in before spring. I didn’t have great luck finding someone to take on the project. After getting the runaround from a shop on scheduling, time was running out. I finally pleaded with my friend Kris at KO racing to help me get it done there. Kris had a tubing bender, lots of fab tools, and is a fantastic welder. I picked up some DOM tube and spent several long days at the shop grinding and drilling away with Kris occasionally helping to reign in my stupidity. I had some pretty specific requirements for the bar design. I wanted it to be SCCA TT legal, sit far enough back that I felt safe street driving it, and in the end, removable too. It took quite a bit more work than I originally thought, but it turned out great. Along with the bar I added a Sparco Evo seat and requisite harness.

At this point I’m just waiting for spring to see how it might do again on the track. I was hoping maybe the 3s would hold together through the season, especially since I bought another car for autocross that was eating up the car fund. I wasn’t particularly optimistic about that outcome…

The early spring weather cooperated and I took the MR2 to Portland International Raceway for the first local SCCA TT event. Just three 20 minute sessions and only 8 minutes from home if anything goes wrong. Well within the first five minutes I sent the knock sensor to the moon. I didnít give it any rest though. If it dies, it dies. The car handled well, maybe a bit on the pushy side. I was still having a lot of fun. With the knock sensor out the car was down on power. I assume it pulls all the timing in limp mode. The car normally runs rich and makes cool flames on overrun, but by the end of the second 20 min session I had already burned through an entire tank of gas! The third session I tried to start downshifting to second gear two times per lap. This dropped the lap times a bit, but as I rolled in at the end I had failed to notice the temp gauge had pegged, whoops! The car cooled down and seemed to be fine, so I drove it home.

I thought maybe the head gasket went and had planned to do a leak down test. My leak-down tester leaked, so I settled for cold compression which seemed fine. When I pulled the plugs I found cyl #3 had a particularly bad time. I had picked up a set of carbotechs pads, but decided I should just finish the EBC yellows off. They were fine at lower speed ORP, but while they never gave up, they clearly were not a good choice for PIR.
I threw in some new plugs I had lying around and replaced the knock sensor with a cheaper GM unit. The car ran fine and was back to its former self. I donít think the HG went after all, it just actually overheated from pushing too much. It could be the original radiator cap. It could be the coolant mix should be more water. Iím not sure I really care. There is no way I could trust this thing to make it through an away-game, even with the boost turned down. I really love the 90s turbo whoosh and sounds, but I also want more power and to not have to tow it everywhere. The only reasonable conclusion I could make is to swap out for a 2GR V6. This should net an additional 100hp over its current configuration and should be much more reliable on track.

Reading about the 2gr swap partly motivated me to look into an buying another MR2 in the first place, so committing to the conversion somehow made sense to me. I would have greatly preferred for this to be a winter project so I could take my time and be super meticulous, but I wasn’t going to accept having the car down all summer long. The swap parts started rolling in, largely from Frankenstein Motorworks and Wilhelm Raceworks. I tried contacting several local junkyards about engines but could not believe how difficult they were. I ended up buying an engine out of a 2015 Avalon from AutoGator in CA. They had great service, documentation, and video of it running in the donor vehicle. Shipped to my door for the same price as a local engine! Would recommend.

Once the new engine was here I yanked out the old 3s, pilfered the harness and few other doodads that I would need and then sent it onto its new home as a core for a rebuild…I think.
I worked on the swap most weekday evenings and some weekends when not out autocrossing. The whole project took about four weeks which was not bad at all. I estimate 50 hours or so. Per usual, it could be done faster the second time around.

First thing I did was paint the valve covers red because that makes the pedestrian Avalon engine look very fast. I also changed out the valve cover gaskets while they were off of course. Engine prep was pretty minimal. I changed out the water pump, threw on the alternator, and installed the custom Frankenstein engine mount. The upper oil pan from a 2gr with a factory oil cooler was swapped out and combined with an adapter plate supplied by Wilhelm Raceworks that adds 10AN fittings to the supply and return for an external oil cooler.

The original 2gr water neck also needs to be modified. I had Kris at KO weld up an adapter from Frankenstein to the water neck for me…but I instructed him to weld it on upside down, luckily he was able to remedy it and it only cost and extra $50 and a lifetime of derision. I also had Kris add a bung in my lower oil pan and help lathe a new groove for my axle because he has all the cool tools.

The swap requires some clearancing of the aluminum block and upper oil pan for the transmission housing, engine mount, and slave cylinder. I had some fun with a die grinder and a Dremel. Once that was taken care off I lowered the engine onto a dolly and bolted on the flywheel and clutch. With the help of a single helicoil, the 93 E153 transmission bolts up to the 2gr in six locations, that’s pretty cool.

With the assembly ready I lifted up the back of the car and slid it back in there, then lifted the engine in. Hooray it’s in place!

I began the more involved process of integrating the chassis side wiring into the ecu connectors. There were lots of guides out there from people who had done it before that were very helpful. I also cross checked the Rav4 and MR2 diagrams to make sure I knew why I was connecting the various bits. Once the bulk of the wires were run it was time to test the starting circuit and prime the oil in the engine. Click and no movementÖ.uh, the crank doesnít turnÖat all. The crank *used* to turn. Oh crap what did I do wrong.

Well I didnít check and the ARP bolts are just a hair too long causing the crank to bind. I pulled the engine back out and threw the flex plate washer in front of the flywheel. Voila, engine spins again. Some cursing was involved. Back in the engine goes. Luckily with the subframe still out this was only a few hours wasted.

So there it was in place and wiring loosely bound and connected. I crossed fingers, knocked on wood, and went to turn the key. Fired right up and idled away! I buttoned up the rest of the coolant hoses, lower suspension and got the car back on the ground.

Then, of course, I ran into a couple initial issues with my setup. First up was the clutch seemed wonky. I assumed it was due to the swap and clutch spacing, etc. Turns out it was simply a bad brand-new slave cylinder. I reinstalled the 26-year old original and it has been fine since. Second was the oil cooler thermostat. I used the mishimoto inline thermostat on the firewall, but I got a pulsing tap at 35-45psi oil pressure. I verified it was all plumbed correctly, but for now I have simply removed it from the system. I will have to revisit this in the future.

Finally I converted my clock gauge to display oil pressure and temp, and installed an Avalon tach in the original cluster. For now all the gauges work and no codes from the ecu!
I drove the car to work and back for a week to hopefully sort out any bugs, but the car needed no attention after the initial foibles. The Berk exhaust sounds great with the 2gr, but its absurdly loud at wide-open-throttle. I added a couple bolt in silencers and that seems to do the job on the street, but a more permanent solution will be coming. There is not an awful lot of room to work with.

The SCCA has kicked off a new Time Trials tour program this year and I was hoping to participate. I like the structure of a ruleset to follow and it should add some good entertainment versus the normal HPDE. It was once again at PIR, so a good shake down event for the recently completed swap. The two day event adds your best lap of two 20 minute sessions plus a standing start "tracksprint" over a subsection of the track. Overall I had a great time and the V6 really rips. I was about 6s faster, 1:33.5s to 1:27.5 with no other changes aside from the engine. Unfortunately I didn't manage to record my fastest lap, but I uploaded a final lap that probably would be the same except the tires drop off with heat load.

I completely hammered the front brakes at the event. I had ordered Carbotech XP8s before the swap was a final consideration and it wasn't enough. I burned through the front pads almost entirely in one event and the rotors are hurting. I would like to continue to run 15" wheels so I don't want to jump onto a BBK yet. I'm going to give some brake ducting and XP10s a shot. Also, PIR happens to be pretty brutal on brakes, other tracks may not be so abusive.

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the MR2 Owners Club Message Board forums, you must first register.
Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.